1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to eye trainers, and more specifically to an infant eye-training device used in conjunction with a baby bottle.
2. Description of the Related Art
Infants are born with very poor eyesight, possessing about one-fortieth the visual ability of normal adults. Eyesight does not develop naturally. Studies have shown that visual stimulation is necessary to develop good eyesight. The crucial period of eyesight development in infants is within the first six months after birth. During this period, the eye muscles strengthen, thus developing greater focus, and the cones develop, improving color vision.
It is now recognized that parents can help strengthen their infant's eyesight by providing visual stimulation. Nursery decorations, patterned mobiles, and changes of scenery all help to this end. Studies have shown that certain patterns and color combinations, such as high-contrast images, may be more effective than others in strengthening an infant's eyesight at a given stage of eyesight development.
Not only does visual stimulation strengthen infant eyesight, it also leads to cognitive development; the infant begins to understand what it sees. Infants need to develop crucial object perception skills to recognize shape, size, color, orientation, motion, and depth. As an infant develops cognitively, it begins to process these visual clues to develop unit formation and surface segregation skills. Later on in development, infants start to process visual clues to recognize and remember arbitrary relations.
Although sight alone can develop these skills, studies suggest that multimode stimulation enhances an infant's cognitive development. For example, a 1-month-old infant can visually recognize an object's smooth or nubby texture after mouthing the object. Similarly, by three weeks of age, infants can detect the relationship between the sight and sound of an object's impact, and by three to five months of age, infants detect intermodal audiovisual relations in the changing distance, substance, rhythm, and tempo of an event. Additionally, studies have shown that when information is presented concurrently in two sense modalities, such as sight and sound, it selectively recruits the infant's attention and facilitates cognitive development.
Certain properties of objects and events are modality specific. For example, the color and brightness of an object can only be detected visually, while pitch and timber can only be detected aurally. Such properties are called modal properties, whereas properties that can be detected in more than one of the sense modalities are amodal properties.
Often, an event conveys information about an object's properties both modally and amodally. For example, the rhythm of a bouncing ball can be perceived through sight or sound, but the color of the ball can only be visually perceived. There is no correlation between the rhythm of a bouncing ball and its color. Instead the relationship is arbitrary. Relations between properties in two sense modalities that do not predictably occur together in nature or across contexts are called arbitrary intermodal relations. Such relations are best learned intermodally.
Although there are a variety of eye training devices, very few, if any, are designed to be used on infants to develop and strengthen eyesight either physically or cognitively. One factor that may contribute to the lack of infant eye training devices is that only recently scientist and researchers have begun to understand how infant sight develops both physically and cognitively. Another factor is the difficulty of placing such a device where an infant may focus on it, and selectively recruit the infant's attention for any extended period of time.
During the first six months after birth, an infant can focus on objects that are six to fifteen inches away. Therefore, an infant eye-training device should be placed at a distance where the infant can focus on the device. Placing a device on the end of a baby bottle would place it in this focal range.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,880,811, issued to Parisi, discloses a device comprising a visually stimulating ornament having a flat head (2-dimensional) shape that is generally round and attaches to and extends from a baby bottle. The Parisi device is designed to prevent an infant from going cross-eyed by giving it something to focus on with its eyes other than the bottle. Although the invention is referred to as an infant eye trainer, it serves as a prophylaxis in trying to prevent an infant from going cross-eyed. There are no devices, however, that attach to a baby bottle and proactively strengthen and enhance infant eyesight physically or cognitively. A device, which attaches to a baby bottle and that proactively helps to strengthen and develop an infant's eyesight, both physically and cognitively, would be desirable.
None of the above inventions and patents, taken either singly or in combination, is seen to describe the instant invention as claimed.